Collaborating to Achieve the Optimal Family Medicine Workforce

Abstract

abstract: When the Family Medicine for America’s Health (FMAHealth) Workforce Education and Development Tactic Team (WEDTT) began its work in December 2014, one of its charges from the FMAHealth Board was to increase family physician production to achieve the diverse primary care workforce the United States needs. The WEDTT created a multilevel interfunctional team to work on this priority initiative that included a focus on student, resident, and early-career physician involvement and leadership development. One major outcome was the adoption of a shared aim, known as 25 x 2030. Through a collaboration of the WEDTT and the eight leading family medicine sponsoring organizations, the 25 x 2030 aim is to increase the percentage of US allopathic and osteopathic medical students choosing family medicine from 12% to 25% by the year 2030. The WEDTT developed a package of change ideas based on its theory of what will drive the achievement of 25 x 2030, which led to specific projects completed by the WEDTT and key collaborators. The WEDTT offered recommendations for the future based on its 3-year effort, including policy efforts to improve the social accountability of US medical schools, strategy centered around younger generations’ desires rather than past experiences, active involvement by students and residents, engagement of early-career physicians as role models, focus on simultaneously building and diversifying the family medicine workforce, and security of the scope future family physicians want to practice. The 25 x 2030 initiative, carried forward by the family medicine organizations, will use collective impact to adopt a truly collaborative approach toward achieving this much needed goal for family medicine.